It all began this morning when I rolled up behind Mr. Pinkbike in his green-and-white-and black Helen’s Cycles Team spandex ensemble stopped on his neon pink fixie westbound at the corner of Venice and La Cienega boulevards.
His color scheme alone is post-worthy, but of course there’s more… much more — with his wasted transgressions well illustrated over our 4.5 miles together thanks to my trusty handlebar cam.
See at the green light Mr. Pinkbike was off across La Cienega with me trailing behind. The fit dude without any baggage looked like he could have outpedaled me with one leg tied behind his head but I, decidedly less aerodynamically shaped or clothed and with bulky backpack onboard, was somehow managing to keep up all the way to Helm Avenue by the bakery complex where I slowed for the red but…
…Mr. Pinkbike didn’t hesitate to run it leaving me behind to watch him get smaller and smaller and to ruminate over such blatant disregard for the law or how it helps further ill the perception of us two-wheelers.
I got rolling again thinking he was too far away for me to catch, but I ended up closing the gap just in time to see him finish running the red at National for which I dutifully stopped.
When the green came around this time I thought for certain he was too far up the road for me to reel back in, but waaay up ahead I saw him make a left at Hughes — the same street I turn left on. And wouldn’t you know after I made my left that I’d end up catching him — on the sidewalk! — at the long red at Washington and Hughes (that he oddly decided to obey), thusly and decidedly negating any time he thought he’d saved by running those two earlier reds.
But wait, there’s more: With excavation going full tilt on at the corner of Culver and Hughes/Duquesne, he next obeyed the workman with the stop sign who halted traffic to let a big dirt hauler exit the construction site.
Could it be Mr. Pinkbike was striving for obey/disobey balance? Uh, no. Because not only did he blaze through the next stop sign at Braddock and through a crosswalk with a pedestrian in it (and a preoccupied crossing guard on the side), but then did so again on Duquesne through the flashing red and stop sign at Lucerne (the site of my one and only ever bicycling ticket last February; and an intersection I will always stop at now and forevermore):
As I’d figured, he dismounted at the Ballona Creek overpass and boarded the bikepath for further — thankfully violation-free journeys oceanward. I caught up with him and said a silent farewell when I disembarked at Inglewood Boulevard in Mar Vista… probably glad to get rid of me once and for all.
Wherever you’re headed Mr. Pinkbike, here’s hoping it’s nothing but green lights and more common sense when they ain’t.
Of course, the entire YouTube version of the timelapse of my morning commute is right here: